


Zeitnot

by Zietegeest



Category: the Queen's Gambit
Genre: Alcohol, Canon Compliant, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Hook-Up, Oral Sex, Sex, Smut, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:01:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27199555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zietegeest/pseuds/Zietegeest
Summary: the missing scene from S1E6 Adjournment
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Comments: 72
Kudos: 906





	Zeitnot

**Author's Note:**

> set after the speed chess party in episode 6

At first - his grip on her arm, the pleading of his stare - she’s afraid he’s going to kiss her like Harry had. With a look that dissolves into softness, dissolving further into begging for permission. Staring with glossy eyes like she was some delicate creature, some otherworldly beauty from some distant star. Something that might crumble under hand. 

She’s held off when Benny first leans in towards her, his eyes flicking down to her mouth like traffic lights from red to green. A part of her mind is holding him at a distance despite their closeness in the doorway, bracing for the kiss. Her eyes dip closed, ready to detach, ready for the softness, the needy press. 

What comes instead is the pressure of his mouth against hers. Firm, steady, almost fierce when they connect, and he doesn’t draw back when she thinks he will. Instead he moves in again, kissing her harder, locking against her lips and moving in a way that his mouth opens against hers. 

She means to grimace, to complain against the eagerness of the drinks he’s had - or at least about his breath. Stale like the yellow light coming down from exposed bulbs, wet like the walls against her palm, but then he’s shifting to one side, lifting a hand to cradle the underside of her jaw, parting his lips against hers.

Then his tongue is slipping past the guard of her lips, tracing a thin line across the bottom row of her teeth, dipping further inside like it’s crafting a map of what lies beneath her defences. And she hates it, hates how easily he’s done it, how smoothly the motion of his tongue inside her mouth is moving, how soft the pads of his fingers are against her skin. But there’s another part, a deeper, richer part of her that likes it, wants more, and has her pressing back, leaning in and open.

It’s the same part of her that had been circling her encounters before this, impatiently pacing as if chained behind a layered gate. Something that had uncurled itself silently to watch strangers kiss and pant into each other’s faces, watching the strange flow of hands against and under clothes. The same part that had waited unamused for the night to end inside a faded college apartment. The part that had turned its nose up at Harry and all his timid awe. That deep part of her had consumed her then, spoiled her mind until it was all she could think of. How much she had disliked the way he had kissed her like a treasure, disliked it with a dampened hold, a pressure in her throat she couldn’t cough out. Harry, and how his sweetness had tasted so sour in her mouth, catching at the back of her tongue with a bitterness to match the pills she’d much rather be swallowing. And it’s not fair to think of Harry now, not when Benny is still pushing in towards her and she’s delivering the force straight back into him. Wasn’t fair at all because this - this was it. This is the heat she’s been craving, what that low and darkened ache within her had been reaching out for.

Here, now, what she’s been reaching towards comes closer on its own accord, presses with a lean body against the front of her, trampled by the shadows lifted by that yellow light.

The kiss is lifted too - out from their mouths into the air surrounding them. Taking on a life of its own as she pulls a breath in, and feels the way Benny chases it from her. The kiss and the heat between them is growing, bulging out across their shadows and then bursting. It stains the walls and the cracks in the floor and Beth can feel it, alive and around them, dripping down their bodies from their pores. 

And when they draw back Benny isn’t looking at her like she’s something beautiful. Instead, he’s smiling. This offset sideways grin that’s almost a sneer, and she recognizes that face. Recognizes and is outraged by the placement of it here, now. The look he’d give her over a long game when he captured her piece, twisted it between his fingers before he placed it off to his side. His side, his fingers, his conquest.

His lets go of her arm next. It leaves a white handprint, a ghost of his fingers that quickly fills in, glows pink in the dark as the blood moving through her body demands to recapture its space.

It’s not enough, she decides in the cooling wake of his hand. Standing in the neon flush of his expression, a little too pleased with himself, she wants to bring him down. Wants to knock him down and see him the way he was on the floor, bent backwards before her, defeated, cross with her repeated victory, humiliated in front of his friends but still too proud to act it. 

She moves forward, stalking him through the doorframe and he lets her, leans back against the opposite frame, cocking one knee and folding his arms low in front of his torso. _What’s next?_ he’s asking with a comfortable and deadly ease. 

That other part of her - a heartbeat on its own - is wretched and hungry, demanding to locate the source of his ease with this. She wants to dig out the root of his confidence, that infuriating slope of his walk, the way he holds himself in conversation. The air of assured and uncaring sway she had been almost certain was just an act. A constructed, manufactured persona of the way he played. There were gaps in it - cracks in his performance throughout the night. That sudden turn on his heels as he broke for his bedroom, and that just as sudden backtrack that had led them here, still standing in the doorway. 

That’s what needs to change, she decides. The location, the uncertainty of it, and she needs to be certain. Extending her arms she lays her hands across his wrists, pulling them back down to his sides. He doesn’t try to hold her hand and she’s grateful for it, closes the distance between them again but doesn’t kiss him. Instead she drapes her body onto the front of his, puts her mouth beside his ear.

“I don’t intend to spend tonight on that inflatable raft.” It’s hardly alluring, but when she pulls back again Benny looks almost stricken. Like the last piece of sober resolve he was holding onto had turned to ash in his mouth, and when she kisses him again it tastes like smoke and embers. 

Benny’s bedroom is as much of a rundown disaster as the rest of his apartment. Ghoulishly barren walls, stacks of books and magazines scattered alongside the walls, and a mound of clothes at the base of his bed, really just a wide mattress held up on wooden slats against the floor. No windows - they’re underground, Beth reminds herself, but the light in here is more orange toned than the hall outside. Flattering like candlelight, and it clings to the corners of the room, softening the space and filling it with a sort of warmth.

“Are you sure?” Benny asks when they’re at the edge of his mattress. He’s not quite faltering, but Beth can hear the haze the whisky’s wrapped him in, not enough to dull him, just enough to cloud his mind. Not his judgement but his own perception of morality, and she reckons this is the closest thing to sweetness that he’s ever going to possess. She answers him with undoing the button on her pants, shaking them onto the floor and stepping into his bed. 

She initiates the next kiss as he comes in to sit beside her. She presses her face to his, feeling his hands move in swiftly to guide at her chin and the back of her neck, but he doesn’t take control of it. He just kisses her back, letting her feel him out like he’s cataloguing her moves, storing them away like there’s something to be gained from them, and Beth wonders if this is part of their play, like sex with Benny is something that can be won or lost. 

His tongue is back in her mouth, and she winds hers experimentally around it, thinking for a moment of Cleo, and how casually she had referred to him. Beth wishes she had prodded her for more, heard the details between the two of them, because if sex was something to be won then Cleo was certainly a gladiator. Beth wants to win this too, wants to hold out her streak with him, and angling their kiss she slides a hand between their bodies, cupping him through the fabric and marvelling at the feel of him filling out beneath her palm. The sensation lights her up on the inside like gasoline stretching for a flame, and she winds her fingers around the shape of him beneath the surface, and it presses forward to meet her. 

She wants more, more of him and more of the flame, wants an inferno beneath her skin and she finds the slack in his belt, sends her fingers into it, seeking out the heat beneath his clothes. When she finds it - beneath his jeans but still trapped beneath another layer - she folds her fingers around him like a dagger. As they kiss her fingers travelling to the tip, tracing, feeling a point of moisture spreading beneath her touch.

“Easy kid,” he’s growling against her mouth, and to Beth it sounds like a point scored in her favour, though the way he’s drawing his hips back away from her feels like a loss, and even as she chases the friction he doesn’t let her have it. 

Instead he’s changing the angle, settling between her legs and sitting back on his heels. And it doesn’t feel fair to her, for her to be deprived of the hot press of his body but his eyes granted the freedom to explore. So she hooks her feet back in towards him, toeing beneath the hem of his shirt and tucking under the loops of his belt until he’s batting them away, a scowl on his face that’s only placed there to disguise his smile, and she has to laugh, letting her head fall back as she does. 

Head tilted, she feels Benny slips his fingers beneath the elastic of her underwear, sliding it down past her hips and retreating down the bed to trace them down her legs. She folds them, pointing her toes and he removes them entirely, and she rests her calves against his waist.

Laid back, she waits for him to crawl back up her body and kiss her, roll on top and align their hips. It doesn’t happen. Instead he stays where he is at the base of the mattress, his legs folded beneath him, and lowers his head towards her thighs. 

“May I?” He’s asking next, and Beth stares down at him, trying to see his next move in her mind. She can’t - thrown by his question because Benny doesn’t ask, not for anything. He imposes and presumes, but now he’s folded at her feet, a question on his lips that she’s affirming just to see what it is he plans to do.

What he does is steady a hand against the fat of her hip, the other coming between her legs as his face dips down. His nose brushes against the tuft of hair as he extends a finger, drawing a fine line across her skin, and she shivers. Not from cold but from the electric buzz that passes from her core up her spine at the contact. Then he’s licking his thumb and parting her like the page of a novel, and when he lowers his head and kisses into her warmth Beth’s head pins back against the pillow, drawing in a rocky gasp of air that barely reaches her lungs. 

His fingers span out across her hipbones, steadying the small writhing of her body against the onslaught of his mouth, both thumbs hooked gently around her now. He moves his tongue out then, sliding from the cradle of his lips to hers, flowing in an assured slither that curves up and sideways and back down again.

Beth’s mouth opens and she lets out a sound that’s too large for her body, her back arching up away from the mattress, pressing down harder into the wet shape of Benny’s tongue. It’s curling up into a pointed edge that pushes into the heat of her then uncurls again, running a flat lick back up to trace her bud in fast hot circles. Beth wants to cry out and dig her nails into his skin and so she does, feeling the firm stretch of his shoulders held in quaking tension, the give of the flesh. His mouth is moving to cover her and the pressure spinning in her gut erupts into a hot pool of fire and ocean waves as he turns the pressure into suction, his lips closing around her, rocking with the crashes of her body.

Then he’s pulling away again, pressing his mouth to her thigh, his fingers running in a distracted canter up her side and she nearly screams.

“Why are you stopping?” She asks, her voice a gasp sliding from low in her throat. Her head feels thick, filled with too much space.

“It’s what you deserve,” Benny is saying, sounding drunker now with a slur that’s almost a growl against her skin.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Beth says, trying to push herself up onto her elbows, but the pull of Benny’s hands are there at her sides, pressing her, and the fall of her chest keeps her down, breathing hard.

“I think you were enjoying yourself a little too much out there,” Benny says, and there’s his motive laid out for her. Revenge, a retaking of the board, and she doesn’t plan to let him have it.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she sighs back, but it’s a lie. She can still taste it and knows that he can taste it on her too. She can see it in her mind, playing out behind her eyes. The curve of his spine, the intensity in his eyes as he glared daggers through the board in front of them, watching her see his moves before he played them, watching her tear them down once he did. 

“You were teasing me,” he’s saying now, and she can still see it. Can hear the dark laughter coming from the other two men, even as she had wiped their boards alongside his, hear the bright sound of Cleo’s laughter too, louder than the rest and it echoes through her mind now.

“Tell me. Say that you enjoyed it,” he says. Challenging her now, daring her to lie again. And now she does sit up, fanning her palms against the grain of his sheets and holding his eye.

“Fine. I did enjoy it.” She can hear her pulse pounding in her ears. The sound catches on the wet shine on Benny’s mouth, playing in the light.

“I liked beating you, over and over,” and she’s leaning forwards now, tucking her legs to one side, cutting off his route to her and walking her hands towards him on the mattress. “In front of them, until you surrendered to it.” Her smile curves the words, and he’s smiling too, though allows little humour to escape.

“Is that what happened,” he says dryly, leaning backwards as she advances on him.

“Oh, that’s exactly what happened,” she says earnestly, sliding her hands to sit on either side of his waist. “You practically had to beg me to stop.” She’s teasing him again now, watching the way the dark part of his mouth flicks up at the corners, and the way he tries to hide it next. There’s colour high up on his cheeks, looks burning hot to touch and so she does. Reaching out with the fan of her fingers to brush against the skin. It is hot, damp with sweat at his temples and the edges of his hair and when he tips his head back, looks up at her with pitch dark eyes she feels the same heat corrupt the walls of her ribcage, sinks down into her gut and blooms into a set of flames.

Her hands are hooked like talons as she undresses him. She can feel the weight of her own stare as she does it, heavy, dark and gleeful as she watches the game play out between them. The way he’s scoffing at her moves even while he shakes beneath them, pretending she’s not affecting him the way she knows she is - the way he knows it too, knows she knows, understands how tightly she’s wrapped the outcome of them around her finger. 

Her fingers fly through the buttons on his shirt, careful not to tear them open though there’s a part of her that wants that too. The fabric slides off his shoulders easily, falling into a rumpled heap behind him as he holds himself up on his forearms, necklaces catching the golden light cascading down around them, and for a breath she just sits back and stares.

She’s seen him topless before but not like this, not with his eyes low and starved for her, with a pink stain across his chest that’s spreading further with every pitch and fall of his lungs. His fingers move towards her then. The same ones always tapping at his sides, tugging and refusing to keep still and they’re refusing now too, edging towards the hem of her shirt. The thick cotton is already wrinkling from their actions, and she pulls it off, the motion taking her headscarf with it, and she drops both without grace or ceremony to the floor. 

Her patience like her hunger, crouched inside and sick of waiting and she moves back in towards him now, digging her fingers into the leather of his belt and pulling it from the loops, chewing into the buttons beneath and undoing them as deftly as her burning drive allows.

Unbuttoned now, she wants to pull them off entirely, but there’s no space to allow it. The opened fly of his jeans are pinned beneath her weight, so she moves to the side, one hand slipping off from him, and she rotates to correct it. She curses under her breath, wonders if this part is always going to be so choppy, unsynchronized and strange, then Benny is lifting his hips, inching back against the mattress and in a flash his jeans are off and he’s pulling at her hips, tugging her forwards as he slots his legs back in together and she’s on top of him. 

He’s tipping his chin up in offering and she takes it, spreading her knees along either side of him and kisses him. He kisses back, wet and breathless, and she can feel the press of his arousal from beneath her. It curves upwards into her, still restricted beneath a layer of fabric, and the softness of the material rasps against the wetness between her legs. She hunts it down, lapping into Benny’s mouth and sinking herself onto the press of him. A quick stutter latches onto his hips as she does, an involuntary motion that she smiles at against his lips, revelling in his annoyance, betrayed by his body giving in to hers.

He breaks the kiss then under the guise of taking a breath, and uses the gap to worm his hands in to her waist, repositioning her just slightly to relieve some of the pressure between them. She lets him adjust her body, smiling at another win. If there was still an ounce of his pride left after all their games this was it, and she lets him have it, feeling him coming in to mouth at her collarbone.

“Do you have condoms?” She asks, closing her eyes as she feels him nip at her throat. 

“Mhm,” he answers to her skin, and she can feel the vibrations moving in a jolt towards the pit of her stomach.

“Get on with it, then,” she says, arching her neck and feeling him twitch between her hips. Then he’s sighing with a snappy sort of frustration that delights her, steadying one hand to her hip and leaning off to the side of his bed and it’s an effort to stay attached to his body. 

Raking her fingers through his hair, the stiff coil of it loosening with sweat now, the raw scent of his skin intoxicating, as clouded as his eyes when he sits upright again and looks at her. 

“Right, okay,” and there it is again, that almost-falter, but he catches it, transforms it into rolling his shoulders back and changing his posture. He sits a bit further back next, pulling back his waistband and the thrill is alive in her chest and the pit of her stomach.

He’s naked in the next moment, and her eyes draw down on their own accord, taking in the shape of him, her body tense and wired with that electrical fire. It’s thin like the rest of him and looking fiercely proud of itself to match, strung upwards to lay against the flat of his stomach. The foil of the condom packet in his hand is glinting in the light, with a golden hued _this is it_ sort of intensity, and he brings his hands together to tear the corner and open it.

“Wait,” she says, catching his arm at the wrist and stilling his hand. He waits, eyes crawling up to meet her and she can hardly spot the difference between his pupils and the dark brown of his eyes.

“I want to do what you did first,” she says, looking down across his body with intent, her tongue edging out to wet her bottom lip as she does. 

For a moment Benny doesn’t say anything. In the lull of silence Beth can see what he’s doing, winding his eyes around her to play a bluff, and knows he’s hoping she sees it as a calculated draw, a moment of contemplation and not the speechlessness that it is.

Breaking the lull he presses the packet into her palm, cocking his head to one side.

“Pick one,” he says, and she raises an eyebrow at him, watching him try to decipher her next move. 

“Why?” She asks, and her empty hand slides back in, wrapping around the base of his cock and gently pulling it in an upwards stroke.

“It’s late and I’m tired,” he counters, and it’s a weak play, a defensive stance held in desperation. She can see the tremble that’s lit up along both sides of his abdomen and she has to smile, unable to hold back the corners of her lips, feeling a laugh threaten to bubble up along with the rich desire inside of her.

“I don’t think that’s it,” Beth says, feeling the way he’s transfixed on the truth of her smile. “I think you couldn’t last for both,” then she’s lowering her hand, stroking up again and feeling the slow shuddering response of his body. 

“Beth…” he breathes out, and she’s captivated by the quiet that’s overtaken him, the flutter of his muscles that she can feel as well as see in the orange light. His spine curving an arch into the mattress and this is new - the sight of a man spread out beneath her, his hands not pawing at her but clutched at his sides instead, eyes dark and deadly, cast up towards her. 

She’s flicking her wrist now, watching the way the head of his cock disappears and reappears between the threading of her fingers, the way the muscles beneath his skin are taut and quivering, the messy splay of his hair against his face. 

“Beth, please,” he says, the words a hot exhale.

“Please what?” She asks, not bothering to hide how entertained she is, matching the pulling of her hand with the pulse between her legs.

“Come here, get on me,” he’s saying, his words strung together with shallow pants of breath.

“On top of you?” Beth asks, stilling the movements of her hands, spreading her thighs further out across his legs, watching the motion of his breathing. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Benny says, reaching out with one hand to slip the condom from it’s wrapper in her hand, brushing their fingers together and looking at her through half lidded eyes. A little stunned in the expression burning from his eyes, Beth realizes that he’s asking for her yield instead of simply brushing her hand off. Realizes as she does release her hand - though only partly, lowers it to a ring around the base - that she’s claimed him, stolen territory that should in every right belong to him. 

With the space now, Benny lowers the plastic down across his tip, gently pushing past the ring of her fingers and then lowering his arm back to his side, complacent in her conquering, and the fire is raging on inside her chest, down through the core of her, surging and crashing.

She’s careful as she walks further down the bed on her knees, placing them on either side of his waist, though her movements are nowhere close to cautious. It’s new territory as she rolls her hips down, tracing her opening along the length of him, and his hands fly up to press into her thighs, not commanding but steadying themselves, and his shoulders fully release onto the mattress. 

Lowering her body down onto his is something else new. Benny’s eyes are thrown down between them as she does, both gravity and that deep, rich, hungry part of her pressing her on. 

Lifting her hips with a rolling motion that she soon takes hold of, she feels the stretch as their sexes meet, feels the connection, then feels herself devour him. There’s no sting to it this time, no resistance from the angle, or from Benny’s pliancy beneath her. The motion of her hips - parting upwards, casting down - is something that she plays with, then masters with the rush coursing through her body.

Benny breathes out her name again, and Beth doesn’t think it’s necessary, closes in towards him and kisses him instead, feeling the way he’s the one parting to let her in now. The way she’s holding him down with her weight, has cornered him and won. He groans against her mouth, a desperate drag that tears down the itch inside her mind that this was his idea.

His idea but her match, her title, and she locks onto a rhythm, wracking her hips just high enough to feel his head along her entrance, then she’s coursing back down again with a forwards tilt and the night bleeds like ink around them. The fire has consumed her now, eaten away at her limbs, living now within the hollow, shaking breaths that Benny’s taking beneath her. 

Another collection of her rolling motions and Benny is moving, dragging an arm up to press down into the heat between them and his thumb slips in to rub against her clit. It’s an uneven motion, sliding in a distorted oval and his head is falling back again, baring his throat to her as his movements devolve, unable to maintain a steady pattern. 

She’s missed the moment her control has faded too, the rise and fall of her hips now a rocking canter, no rules to the rhythm and this new pressure from his hand destroys it further. The moan she lets out is broken, massacred in her throat by the pounding of her heart, and beneath her, inside her, she can feel Benny’s pulse too. Fast and wild, barely holding on and the fire is volcanic now, hot waves of lava coursing piping through her veins, breaking off new paths, reaching towards him through her skin. 

Benny lets out a sound that’s helpless and breaking and so unlike him and the fire has chewed a hole through the centre of her now, the flames licking through where they’re connected, and a ripple of pleasure runs down from her core, twists around her legs and her climax hits her, consuming her in the red ruins of the blaze.

Beth can feel herself tightening in spasms around him, releasing in a heartbeat then clenching harder. Pulling herself forward, riding out the failing traces of her orgasm, she looks down at him. 

Any trace of calculation and composure left in him is wrecked, torn to pieces on his face and she reaches out with a hand to push that coil of hair back again. She lifts her hips, sinking back down with a sigh that feels bone deep, lifts again and she’s not halfway up when he’s shaking, bolting his hips to meet her flesh again and crying out. 

Her movements still then, and his to match, and for a moment they just sit like that, breathing hard and quiet in the room.

When he draws his hips back and they disconnect, Beth is hit again with how much it feels like both a loss and a win, rolled together into a strange new shade. The heat of their skin pressed together feels inescapable, wet and steaming, and they fall to the mattress together. Benny folds in to kiss her, just as fiercely but now riddled with a falling fatigue. Beth can taste the whisky, the weight of his heaving breaths, and eventually she has to twist to the side to get her own breath of air. From behind her Benny shudders, hands gripping her hips as he presses into her side.

“So that’s what it’s supposed to feel like,” she says, stretching her legs against the sheets, wrapped up in the orange glow.


End file.
